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Where Should Science Bloggers Look For Traffic?

The Census of Science Bloggers 2011 asked, Excluding search engines, what is your primary traffic driver? After eliminating for single instances and some standardization, the breakdown is as follows:

Twitter (70)
Facebook (59)
Links from Other Blogs (45)
Reddit (14)
ResearchBlogging (13)
Feed Subscriptions (10)
Google+ (8)
Commenting on Other Blogs (7)
Science Blog Network (7)
Return/Direct (4)
StumbleUpon (4)
Tumblr (3)
FriendFeed (2)
LinkedIn (2)
MetaFilter (2)

Gee. Twitter and Facebook top the list. What a surprise. Well yes, confirming what we already know isn't that useful (unless you're not already syndicating your content to Twitter and Facebook). But keep in mind that this is a list of primary traffic drivers, which means that each site on the list has the potential to send you more traffic than any other source. The trick is knowing how to tap that potential.


What are we really talking about then? Because there are trade-offs in time and energy, and if you're like me, both of those are in short supply. I look at that list and think, I'd love to maximize my Twitter and Facebook potential, but frankly, to do so would require more time and effort than I'm willing to devote to those particular websites. I'm not interested in being on Facebook. Not really. And while I find Twitter more appealing than FB, again, I'd rather be doing something else. But still, I'm no expert in either Twitter or Facebook, so I couldn't tell you how to maximize your traffic from either of those sources. That would be useful information.


Going down the list (subscription link to my blog feed is prominently displayed, check; I don't have a lot of time to comment on other blogs, not checked; I'm on a network so links from other blogs is covered, check; I'm going to join Google+ any day now, check; etc.) I see something that I am an expert in, something that I can share with you how to turn into a primary traffic driver for your blog. That site is Reddit, and while it may seem very confusing at first, it's the primary traffic driver that fits my schedule best (because it doesn't require my constant attention), and it's actually quite simple to understand/navigate once you get the hang of it. I've even already written up the how to: Science Blogging and Reddit

So you see. That was useful after all. Now all I need is for someone to explain FriendFeed to me.
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